George Miller’s 2006 computer-animated Happy Feet uses classical Hollywood editing conventions adapted to the animation “camera,” along with a realistic approach to a computer-animated world integrated with live-action footage to establish a specific and limited perspective—and, in the film’s last act, create a significant split in the viewer’s emotional identification that is vital to the film’s moral and spiritual significance. This very deliberate and artful manipulation of the spectator’s response transforms an ending misunderstood by many of Happy Feet’s critics as overtly didactic and politically heavy-handed into a far more universal (and far more mystic) moral statement, echoed in the Abbey Road musical quotation that bookends this very musical film: “And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” This use of traditional cinematic codes of camera placement, movement, and editing to orient the audience’s sympathies and create emotional identification, only to overturn these established attitudes in the film’s final sequences, explodes, enhances, and broadens the thematic ties between romantic love, communal love, and love for the individual beyond even the global level, suggesting another realm of higher beings beyond the visible expanse of space.

Happy Feet follows Mumble, a tone-deaf misfit (he was dropped as an egg) in a community of emperor penguins in which the only way to win a mate is by singing for them the “heartsong.” Though he can’t carry a tune in a bucket, Mumble is born with an incredible ability to express himself by tap dancing. Mumble’s gift, however, is frowned upon by his peers, his teachers, and especially by the village elders, the community’s religious and governmental leaders, who even at one point accuse Mumble’s inability to measure up to social expectations of having brought a fish famine on their community.

The film establishes the complex world of the penguins in its first act—the penguins’ religion, hierarchy, social customs, and beliefs about family are observed with an almost anthropological attention to detail—but, with its opening shots, Happy Feet also significantly orients that fictional world within the grand expanse of the cosmos. The film begins with the image of a nebula, which briefly takes on the countenance of a mother penguin and her young, before hurtling us through space and through Earth’s atmosphere into the penguin’s community. The rest of the film reverses these opening moments, taking us instead from the micro to the macro, building from the individual’s story into the story of a planet—even the entire universe.

In Nick Browne’s essay, “The Spectator-in-the-Text: The Rhetoric of Stagecoach,” Browne examines the means by which director John Ford creates in the audience emotional identification with a specific character or characters in a given shot, scene, or film, by allowing us, through the camera, to quite literally see through their eyes. The camera orients the characters within the space (through some form of a master shot), and then proceeds to orient us emotionally by shooting from a given character’s geographically established point-of-view; the result of this spatial identification is a parallel emotional identification.

Miller uses a subjective camera—kinetic, constantly swooping, darting, and moving—shot frequently from Mumble’s perspective, and intercuts this viewpoint with occasional wide shots (the only entirely static, “objective” shots in the entire film), in which Mumble and the other characters are contextualized within a much larger and more impersonal reality. There is a physical beauty and reality in the animation that makes these moments particularly breathtaking—almost as real as a big-screen nature documentary. In one such shot, Mumble and his friends journey across the static frame, left to right, battling the fiercely cold wind and snow, the setting sun casting harsh, glorious light across the barren ice; it’s an image of classical, elemental struggle and practically tangible severity.

Later, as Mumble leaps off the cliff into the water to go in search of the “aliens,” we follow him through the subjective camera (plummeting down along with him, as he squints his eyes against the whipping wind); after this, Miller cuts to the expansive view, and Mumble becomes a tiny dot moving through space—highlighting both the sheer size of the white cliff from which he jumped, as well as his own existence as a tiny (but distinctive) speck in a huge world.

The use of a subjective camera centering on Mumble’s experience is integral not only to the way in which the story is told and its immediate emotional impact, but also to the means through which meaning is communicated, once again, expanding from the micro to the macro. Once the world of the penguins has been established (and Mumble’s place in it), we get our (and Mumble’s) first encounter with the Other—the attack of the skua birds, revealed, once again, in a camera move that provides for us as an audience the equivalent of Mumble’s revelation within the scene: he falls over, and the camera moves away from Mumble until two enormous bird legs frame the shot, so that we recognize them the very same instant as Mumble, and, just as Mumble is trapped physically, so we as viewers are trapped visually.

The move is significant in that it provides us with the emotional equivalent to (and subsequent connection with) the protagonist, but it is also the first of several such “alien” encounters throughout the film, in which the world up to that point is broadened and contextualized by the sudden intrusion of something larger and as yet unknown. Significantly, it is during this scene (the first time we see a living thing that is not an emperor penguin), that we also get the first indirect reference to humans (another “alien”—literally, as the skua bird relates the story of an abduction by aliens that we, as an audience, recognize to be humans).

The film’s narrative can be divided into these moments in which Mumble comes in contact with a new and unknown species, each apparently bigger and more powerful than the last. The second of these is a tiger seal, which first makes its presence known by rocking the tiny block of ice on which Mumble sits, then appears as an indistinct shadow under the water, and finally emerges from the water to reveal itself in what quickly turns into a fast and frightening chase (if one wants to see Miller’s use of the subjective camera, look no further than this chase scene—the camera swoops down hills and through snow and ice). And, as soon as Mumble has escaped, the tiger seal (at first seemingly indestructible in its massive size and strength) is also contextualized (the macro made micro), as he becomes comically immobile and powerless on dry land. The conclusion of the chase also leads to the next introduction of a new species: the Adelie penguins, another, smaller species of penguin with other customs and beliefs (and even Hispanic accents to anthropomorphize their racial difference from and relation to the emperor penguins). Again, Miller’s camera moves with Mumble, crossing the threshold of a snowy hill at the same moment he does to reveal thousands of other penguins like his new friends.

This process of anthropomorphization (and, by contrast, photorealistic depiction) is also important in how Happy Feet operates to create meaning—the thematic, emotional, and intellectual movement and development of the story inform even the most basic visual design. The penguins in Happy Feet exist in a world between the photographic realism of The March of the Penguins and the conventional, cartoonized computer-animation of a Disney or Pixar film. These penguins are unique, with slightly exaggerated human qualities, but they never become cartoons—Miller originally conceived of the film as a technical hybrid between live-action and special effects, using animated mouths and faces on live-action animals (as in the two Babe films), and, although the majority of Happy Feet is computer-animated, he’s really using different techniques to achieve essentially similar ends. The animals in Happy Feet exist as the expected, animated-anthropomorphized audience surrogates, but also as actual penguins—the females are curvy, but in a penguin way, rather than a human way, and they all eat their fish, blood, skeleton, and all. It is this sense of reality (and our contextualization in the mystery and vastness of the heavens) that anchors the film and gives it a sense of gravity—and turns a group of recently-graduated penguins singing Queen’s “Somebody to Love” to the school-dance-like Northern Lights not just a moment of imaginative cinematic bliss, but also a genuine plea to the heavens, yet another instance of the linkage between romantic and cosmic love established in the film’s opening image, and that will be integral until Happy Feet’s last frame.

Unlike Pixar’s Wall-E, when the humans appear in Happy Feet, they are not cartoons; Miller and his team seamlessly blend the realistically rendered world of the animals with the live-action human world. As Mumble lies washed ashore after attempting to make contact with the “aliens,” darkness absorbs the screen and the film fades to black. Then, we see Mumble emerge from the dark as he enters the shimmering white light of the zoo. “You’re in heaven, Dave. Penguin heaven,” he is told. Mumble explores his new surroundings, and we explore with him—until he realizes, painfully, that the distant, snowy horizon is really just a mural painted on a wall. He dives into the water, and there he sees, faintly (and through a glass darkly), two human faces gazing back at him. As Mumble screams out in the depth of his despair—the cry falls on deaf ears, as the zoo patrons continue to walk about, play their Game Boys, and so on—the camera again moves away, and the cry echoes throughout the earth, and throughout the cosmos. The opening image of the film is mirrored, and, in a way, the film has come full circle, enveloping us in the penguins’ world only to remind us again of the external reality in which this constructed, fictional world exists. We’ve been drawn into Mumble’s experience by the limited parameters of the story and camera and lulled into the emotional immersion that we have come to expect from narrative film—and then, with the introduction of the live-action human form, our sympathies are split. Our investment in Mumble and his journey remains, but our universal, instinctual identification with the photographic human form (“the transcendent subject,” as film theorist Bela Balazs has called the human face) creates an opposition in our emotional identification; we are now, as viewers, Mumble trapped in a cell, and we are also the unlistening men and women going about their business on the other side of the glass. From this point on, we are responsible.

The use of the term “alien” is also significant in the development of the film’s moral order. Once again, the audience’s identification is split, this time verbally rather than visually—as viewers, we see the “aliens” through the eyes of the penguins (and skua birds), even as we easily identify them (based on the bird’s description) as humans. An early cut of Happy Feet actually included another storyline involving an alien race which resembled penguins (perhaps this will figure into the sequel, which is on its way); though the space aliens make no appearance in the film, their presence is still keenly felt. Through Mumble and the world of the penguins, we feel the presence of a being higher and more powerful than ourselves (the humans), on which we must depend for survival—and, through the introduction of the on-screen humans, this feeling is both transferred and transformed. We are imbued with a recognition of our responsibility to the earth, even as we become aware of our own dependence on higher forces for existence. Thus, Happy Feet becomes more than an excellent expansion on a traditional family film structure (the outsider who proves himself to the community); it is a spiritual meditation on our moral responsibilities to one another, and on our relationship to God—or even, as Happy Feet seems subtly to suggest, a world of unknown gods and goddesses, existing somewhere in physical space, but beyond the visibility of the eye.

The last sequence of the film makes the final move from the penguins’ world into the world of the humans. Mumble has been released back into his community, a tracking device attached to his back. He tells his story, is reunited with his family, and finally wins the support of his community, when they realize that it is Mumble’s dancing, rather than the shifting dogma of the superstitious elders, that will ultimately save them. The elders are obvious Pharisees, and in many ways Mumble acts as Christ—experiencing a sacrificial spiritual death in his time at the zoo, a “resurrection” of sorts through his return, and ultimately acting as the intermediary between the penguin world and the humans; dancing is the redemption of the community (which, at the mercy of the humans, becomes as an entity an outsider itself, like Mumble)—the message of universal love is spread as the community becomes united, and Mumble and Gloria are united romantically, fusing the individual, the community, the family unit, and a dependence on and reverence to higher powers. This sequence, too, begins from the point-of-view of the penguins, as Mumble returns; then, with the entrance of the live-action helicopter, our viewpoint shifts. We see the penguins’ perspective, looking up at the four powerful pilots standing like ominous pilgrims (or aliens, or gods) on the mountaintop; then, we cut to the pilots’ perspective, looking down upon the throng of birds, and all is silent. And then: dancing. We gaze on the sea of tap-dancing penguins with the wonder and the panoramic position of the pilots; now the penguins are the Other—foreign, but beautiful, and even awe-inspiring in their mystery. The camera moves away yet again, turning the pilot’s vision of the dancing penguins into the digital image of a TV screen, as people elsewhere in the world see the same thing, and the viewer is also metacinematically made aware of his or her own position as a spectator. These viewers, however, are not only witnesses, they are imbued with a capacity for action—the film ends with the controversial montage, as people around the world discuss the phenomenon, argue, attempt to pass bills, and so on. But this is not simple-minded political propaganda, and Happy Feet is not only a call to resettle Earth’s environmental imbalance—as we have seen, through the split in human-penguin identification, it is also a much broader plea to restore balance in the universe in every way. This is not just a film about penguins—because we identify with Mumble, it is also a film about us, about every minority and every outsider, and, in depicting both points-of-view (the dance from the penguins’ perspective, the dance from the humans’ perspective), the film suggests that it is in making this connection, in finding a common ground, acknowledging, embracing, and seeking to understand the Other that we are able to save them—and be saved. Like the humans in Happy Feet, we all have a responsibility to reach out and save the many beautiful, vulnerable lives around us. And, like the penguins, we are all at the mercy of higher powers—we are at the mercy of gods, and we are at the mercy of each other. There is salvation, but only after all we can do, both for ourselves and especially for one another.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Out of the Mount: 19 From New Play Project is a collection of nineteen short (ten-minute and one-act) plays I edited, which was published last year by Peculiar Pages. It's available for sale on Amazon.com in paperback (prettier) and as an ebook (cheaper).

"With these 19 plays, the New Play Project ably makes its claim as one of the most ambitious and vibrant going concerns in the world of LDS culture to all of us mission-field Mormons who have only heard rumors and testimonies. Out of the Mount delivers comedy and tragedy and social commentary, allegory, politics and healthy doses of armchair philosophy and theology in plays that mainly focus on (as most good plays do) relationships that unfold via crackling dialogue. Whether it s Clark Kent and Lois Lane applying for a marriage license or Adam and Eve feeling their way towards some sort of post-fall rapprochement or young couples falling in and out of love, these playwrights are writing for these latter-days, even when there s nothing particularly LDS about their characters and settings. That said, what I love most about this anthology is that we get--especially with the fantastic concluding trio of 'Gaia,' 'Prodigal Son' and 'Little Happy Secrets'--works that artfully and poignantly explore key aspects of the grand drama that is the Mormon experience."
--William Morris, A Motley Vision blog

The final image of Samuel Fuller's White Dog fades from color to black-and-white, and from black-and-white to a negative. Nothing has changed--it's only been inverted.

White Dog is a critique not only of racism, but of the ways in which we address it--Fuller's final film acts as a commentary not only on the blacks and whites of skin color, but on black-and-white thinking. Hatred is instilled in individuals and instilled in the culture collectively by repeated abuse. Like the dog, we're either indoctrinated, pummeled into ideological submission, or else we're simply born into prejudice, heirs to the sins of the fathers--the film's take on racism recalls a statement from one of Fuller's earlier films, Shock Corridor, in which racism is described as a "disease carried to those yet unborn." And, like the dog, this disease may be incurable. In the film's climax, the dog learns to accept Keys' black skin, only to attack the white Carruthers immediately thereafter. When hate has been instilled, legislation can only go so far--we can't seem to find a cure, the best we can do is to switch sides. We need an enemy. Nothing is changed--only inverted.

In the book on which it's based, the white dog is counter-programmed by Keys, a black Muslim, to attack white people--a blatant metaphor for the Black Panthers' response to civil rights: to fight violence with more violence, to take the oppressor's tools and use them against him. But Fuller's adaptation complicates the conversation, addressing problems that may be more lingering and less easily negotiable. Here Keys isn't seeking revenge, he is sincerely, even obsessively, attempting to cure the dog of its aggression altogether--only to find out after several attacks and at least one death that the dog is incurable. Once it's been instilled, cultural violence cannot be eradicated, only displaced. Only inverted. Nothing changed.

In White Dog, those "yet unborn" who inherit the disease are embodied by two innocents, the beaming granddaughters, their heads held in unnatural headlock by an ostensibly harmless, apparently affectionate, chocolate-bearing grandpa: the proud racist who trained the dog to be a killer. When Julie finds him standing at her gate, she yells, she swears, she lashes out--and, while her anger may be justified, her response is just more of the same. Abuse. Aggression. Hatred begetting hatred.

White Dog isn't merely targeting the reactionary violence of the Black Panthers--Fuller's film is an indictment of an inherently violent cultural mindset, a tradition of inflammatory rhetoric, a society that seems to always needs someone to attack. We need enemies, and the most we ever seem to do is to give them different faces.

Körkarlen, released in Sweden in 1921, was the fourth of director Victor Sjöstrom's adaptations of Selma Lagerlöf's stories. In 1912, Lagerlöf was commissioned to write an informational piece on the dangers of tuberculosis, and, with a sister and a niece who both suffered from the illness, it was a sensitive subject for the author. Instead of an essay, Lagerlöf opted to communicate the same message through fiction, writing a novel that borrowed the basic structure of Dickens' A Christmas Carol and adapted it into a far bleaker, far more terrifying, and even more deeply redemptive tale set at the dawn of the New Year.

David Holm, the protagonist who dies in the first act of the film only to be visited by the haunting carriage of the title, is, like Dickens' penny-pincher, haunted by his horrific past—but David Holm's sins are far more damning than Scrooge's misanthropic miserliness; Holm's descent into drink and illness (both physical and spiritual), extraordinarily realized through Sjöstrom's direction and his astounding central performance, is a truly hellish journey. While Dickens opts for easy (and effective) sentimentality, focusing on a man drained of his innate goodness, Sjöstrom's David Holm is something far more frightening—a convert to evil, a destructive agent who bitterly and vengefully uses his illness to infect and destroy others. Even the structure, while lifted from Dickens, is complicated by an almost labyrinthine Proustianism—flashbacks occur within flashbacks, and the chronology and context only gradually come into focus, like a memory or a nightmare (or a memory of a nightmare). Lagerlöf's original purpose in writing the story is evident in Holm's lethal handkerchief—a warning against the ways in which communicative disease may be spread—even as the story's complex structure and emphasis on character elevate it from public service announcement into something far more enduringly mythological. As dramatized by Sjöstrom, David Holm's fall is deliberately and dramatically biblical; Holm's family life is depicted as edenic, with a stark contrast between the rippling, sunlit farm field exteriors and the dark, murky, eternal night of the studio-bound city scenes that chronicle his drinking and destruction, self- and otherwise. Coming on the heels of Sweden's Industrial Revolution, Körkarlen is, among other things, a romantic ode to a simpler time and a lament for an increasingly ugly and dirty world, with Holm's spiritual corruption mirrored by his decaying surroundings. But, while Holm's fall from grace is classically Old Testament, his climactic redemption is just as thoroughly Christian; Körkarlen is the parable of the prodigal son brought to life in terrifying and profoundly moving detail, a sermon on mercy and a demonstration that even the most apparently hopeless and corrupt of souls is not beyond the transformative love of Christ. The embodiment of that pure love in the film is Edit, the Salvation Army girl who sees David at his worst and loves him nevertheless, seemingly without reason (when she sews up the rips in his jacket, he makes sure she is there to watch as he violently tears them back out again). In the film's finale, Edit's sacrificial death miraculously and paradoxically brings David back to life, providing both he and his family with a second chance. Lagerlöf was commissioned to write an essay on preventing disease; what she and Sjöstrom came up with was one of the most beautiful religious parables of the 20th century.

The didactic possibilities of Körkarlen were recognized and seized upon for its American release, which re-edited the film into a straightforwardly linear cautionary tale fit for the Prohibition era—the story of a good man turned bad by drink. While the complex series of flashbacks in Sjöstrom's original film give the material powerful psychological complexity, the American release ironically jettisoned the complicatedly Dickensian structure in an apparent move towards reassuringly Dickensian melodrama; the American edit uses the individual character as a means by which to highlight the social problem, whereas Sjöstrom uses the social problem to give definition and dynamism to a fully-rounded and complicated character, the focus of his story. It's an approach that would seem to reflect Sweden's own more nuanced political response to problems surrounding alcohol, with the implementation of a ration rather than an outright prohibition—a moderation and understanding of circumstance that may well be the difference between propagandizing and storytelling, between Lagerlöf's commissioned essay and her resulting story. It is Christlike compassion for the individual and charitable attention to detail that transforms the mere distribution of information into the communal and potentially transformative experience of storytelling.
Sjöstrom's background in the theater is evident in his simple framing, detailed design, and especially in the focus on the performances to carry the story—but while Körkarlen harkens back to a classical mode of silent storytelling, the film was also blazing bold new trails in Swedish cinema. Sjöstrom, a pioneer in shooting on location, moved most of the production indoors to create the controlled environment necessary for the dozens of complicated special effects shots. The decision paid off. The ghostly, double-exposed phantom carriage is no mere gimmick—the image casts an eerie, otherworldly shadow over the entire story (early in the film, we see the carriage riding over the waters of the ocean—it goes anywhere, there is no escape), and it also allows for some striking mis-en-scene, as when, in the midst of the cemetery, a single white cross shines through the center of the transparent carriage. It's an image that encapsulates the thematic thrust of the entire story—a glimmer of hope in the midst of death and decay. In Körkarlen, Death's carriage is physicalized, but God's mercy is something quieter—it must be taken on faith. In the midst of a lone and dreary world, surrounded by horrors, and even in the heart of death itself (both physical and spiritual) there is the possibility for redemption and renewal. Sjöstrom's film depicts a bleak world of seemingly insurmountable sin, and Christian love—that is to say, perfect and unconditional love—is more necessary here than anywhere.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

I presented this essay at the 2010 Mormon Media Studies Symposium; it was also published in The Mormon Review. It is rich with spoilers for the movie Pan's Labyrinth, which is one of my favorite movies ever, for many reasons I discuss in this paper, and for its inclusion of awesome monsters like this one:

Read! Enjoy! Consider! Comment!

I. The Case for Mormon Criticism

Much is made in the LDS community of the need for great Mormon art and artists. Orson F. Whitney said it perhaps most famously: “We shall have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own.” While these conversations are frequently worthwhile and sometimes even inspiring, they often miss a couple of simple and significant points. First: great Mormon art and artists already exist. No matter your definition or your standards, there is much out there that is of very good report indeed. Second: all art for Mormons need not be “Mormon art” for it to be valuable. While there is no reason not to tell stories unique to Latter-day Saint religion, culture, and community, there is also no need to be entirely exclusive, either as artists or as audience members—the majority of spiritual experiences, after all, most likely take place outside of the temple and the church meetinghouse.

Separate from, but related to the need for great Mormon artists is the need for mature, thinking Mormon audiences. In order for an artistic movement to flourish, a number of requirements are necessary. An audience must exist to receive the work. Equally necessary is the existence of a critical community. With Sunstone, Dialogue, Irreantum, the Association for Mormon Letters (AML), BYU Studies, and other like-minded enterprises, a body of intelligent critics and criticism has developed in the Mormon arts community. What is largely missing, however, is Mormon criticism of non-Mormon texts. Richard Bushman recently launched The Mormon Review in an attempt to fill this void in the Mormon critical community. So far, it has published a number of very worthwhile essays, on topics ranging from Vertigo to Dan Brown to the original Battlestar Gallactica; the website, however, is still in its infancy, and, between the blog-like format and the inconsistency of new content, it has yet to receive the attention of the aforementioned publications. Other examples of Mormon criticism of non-Mormon texts exist, but it seems they are still too few and far between.

What might be the purpose of a Mormon criticism? The same as any other school of criticism, I think—to reveal something new and worth investigating in the work, the reader, the critic, and the ideology being used. Our theological background gives us unique insight into certain works, just as certain stories reveal to us things we had never realized about our own doctrine and beliefs. Not every work of art warrants a specifically Mormon reading—most probably do not, just as not every work is suited to a psychoanalytic reading—but that should not deter us from using our Mormon lens to examine those that seem to invite it. Steven Spielberg may not have intended E.T. as a celebration of how Christ's Atonement so personally heals that which is broken in us, but it is certainly a valid interpretation of the film; and, while there may not have been any Latter-day Saint involvement in Disney's Pinocchio, the film still acts as a very moving parable of the Plan of Salvation.

And so, as those entrenched within Mormonism and within the arts continue to ask the questions: “What is Mormon art?” and “What is Mormon film?” I would like to suggest one possible answer: Mormon film is any film as seen by a Mormon.

II. Case Study: Pan's Labyrinth and the Sanctity of Disobedience

Writer-director Guillermo Del Toro's film Pan's Labyrinth (2006) follows the frightening and fantastical journey of a young girl, Ofelia, through a series of magical adventures, set against the backdrop of the real-life horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Del Toro frames Ofelia's story with, essentially, a mythological conception of the Plan of Salvation. The film begins with voice-over narration:

“A long time ago, in the underground realm, where there are no lies or pain, there lived a Princess who dreamed of the human world. She dreamed of blue skies, soft breeze, and sunshine. One day, eluding her keepers, the Princess escaped. Once outside, the brightness blinded her and erased every trace of the past from her memory. She forgot who she was and where she came from. Her body suffered cold, sickness, and pain. Eventually, she died. However, her father, the King, always knew the Princess' soul would return.” (Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro)

Spiritual royalty, lost in a fallen world where she is prone to the frailties of mortality, separated from her pre-Earth memories by means of a “veil,” Ofelia discovers and accepts her divine identity by navigating a series of moral complexities, in an attempt to reclaim her heritage and return to live with her true father, the King. This is the basis for a story that takes the moral logic of a uniquely Mormon conception of the Fall of Man, and extends it to an Abraham and Isaac narrative. The result is powerful, and the implications profound.

Mormonism holds a unique view of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. While a variety of interpretations exist within Mormonism, Latter-day Saints tend to believe, more so than other Judeo-Christians, that Eve’s partaking of the fruit was less a momentary vulnerability to temptation than it was the wise and courageous decision of a strong woman choosing to take on mortality in the face of pain, death, and difficulties. A poem by Sarah E. Page, “Coring the Apple,” published in Mormon Artist magazine, eloquently expresses this view:

“Instead of the thorn,
Hast thou found honey?

I would like to ask Eve someday
What she saw in the apple.

Before she chose
The fire-stung glory of mortality,
Did she pause for even the space of a breath,
Tremble at the bruise of pain, the sharpness of the briar?
Perhaps she sensed the hope nestled star-like
In the core of the fruit
And so risked all she was for the quickening--
The promise of the seed dreaming deep in the loam.

I would like to ask Eve someday
What she saw in me.”

The “commandment” not to eat of the fruit, then (the word “commandment” is used more in discussions of the Genesis story than it is in the actual account of it), is less a commandment in the traditional sense, and more a statement of cause and effect: “For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). In God’s plan, partaking of the fruit was essential, but it was to occur only when Adam and Eve had matured to the point that they were able to make the decision for themselves, and to take upon themselves the consequences of mortality. This understanding of the Adam and Eve story celebrates the innate individual spiritual conscience—the Light of Christ—capable of making significant moral choices even when they may seem contradictory to the commandments of God Himself. This is a radical and profound re-envisioning of a classical myth. The Mormon Adam and Eve are gods in embryo indeed—their spiritual and moral instinct bears even greater weight than a perceived commandment.

This dichotomy between moral reasoning and unthinking obedience is central in Pan’s Labyrinth. The film’s villain, Captain Vidal (also Ofelia's stepfather), is a foil to the celestial cosmology of the fantasy world—where Ofelia is the spiritual heir to a glorious throne, Vidal is the dark lord of a corrupt land. Ofelia must resist Vidal’s evil—and, ultimately, overcome it with good—in order to save herself and redeem Spain.

Throughout the story, Ofelia is presented with a series of tests, administered by a faun (the literal translation of the title is The Labyrinth of the Faun); the faun acts as an intermediary between Ofelia and her father, whose existence she must take on faith. For one of these tests, she is asked to retrieve the contents of a small box from a large dining room filled with delicious food without touching or tasting it—“Do not eat of the fruit,” she is told, in effect. The Ofelia in this scene is, in many regards, a traditionally Christian Eve—she disobeys and eats a single plump, juicy grape, and so unleashes a terrifying monster when she “partakes of the fruit.” She escapes the creature's clutches and returns in safety, but the faun's wrath is kindled—and, through her ignorant act of disobedience, she has very nearly forfeited her royal heritage.

These challenges Ofelia faces in the magical world are juxtaposed against a backdrop of the all-too-real horrors of the Spanish Civil War, in which she finds herself mired. In the woods surrounding Captain Vidal's house—even in the household itself—a resistance movement has been building. Dr. Ferreiro, a medical doctor who works for Vidal—and who is also an undercover force for the resistance—is presented with his own moral choice, one that once again echoes that of Adam and Eve, albeit in an inverted form. Vidal has captured one of the soldiers of the resistance, and is torturing him for information. The Captain commands Ferreiro to keep the prisoner alive after he has tortured him nearly to death—Vidal wants the man to suffer as much as possible, and also wants as much information as he can extract from him. Rather than keeping the prisoner alive, Ferreiro mercifully administers a lethal injection. Vidal is enraged by the doctor's act of disobedience. When confronted, Ferreiro responds, “To obey—just like that—for the sake of obeying . . . without questioning . . . That's something only people like you can do, Captain.” It is important to remember Ferreiro's words in the climax of the film, when Ofelia must prove herself in her third and final test, and in which these thematic and theological strands are finally united.

For this final test, Ofelia must take her mother’s newborn baby, her own little brother, into the middle of the garden maze outside their house—when she arrives, Ofelia is told she must offer the child's blood as a sacrifice. The blood sacrifice of a pure and innocent child immediately conjures up Christian parallels (especially taking place, as it does, deep in a garden in the dark of night), but this story even more specifically recalls that of Abraham and Isaac, with a powerful and seemingly cruel God requiring an offering of a vulnerable child upon the altar.

In his story “Abraham's Purgatory,” included in The FOB Bible, B. G. Christensen recounts the story of Abraham's sacrifice, as he plays out the event time and again in his mind, in every possible iteration. Each time, the story concludes with a cold, piercing finality: “He placed the knife against his son's neck and cut.” Abraham pleads with God again and again—he asks for a sign, but he is met with silence. The story concludes:

Once again, Abraham lifted his knife and tried to ignore the fear in his son's eyes.
The knife trembled.
“I'm sorry, son. There is no other way. We must obey the Lord. We—we must—” No.
No.
I will not.
Abraham lowered the knife to his son's wrist and cut the twine. Above Isaac's grateful sobs he heard a rustling in the bush.
(“Abraham's Purgatory,” Christensen)

Christensen's rewriting of Abraham's sacrifice turns on its head the traditional story of unshakable faith and absolute obedience. In this story, Abraham's test of faith remains just as unendurable, but the angel who appears to Abraham here is not a physical being or a vision of light; instead it is his own spirit, his moral conscience—the godly within him. Like the Eve of Mormonism, like Jesus among the Pharisees, Abraham breaks a commandment to fulfill a higher law, and it is in his act of willful, reasoned disobedience that he paradoxically finds salvation.

Like Christensen's uniquely Mormon Abraham, Ofelia, too, renounces the blind obedience decried by Ferreira, and refuses the faun’s request of the infant’s life; where her act of disobedience in the first test was weakness, this resolute refusal is strength. Captain Vidal, who has been chasing Ofelia through the garden maze, appears, and Ofelia is shot and killed. In a moment of beautiful irony, Ofelia’s own blood acts as the necessary sacrifice of an innocent, and, as in Eden, seemingly contradictory moral necessities are clarified and unified, fulfilled and transcended. Ofelia acts as a Savior for her younger brother (and, by extension, the future of Spain itself), and, in wisely disobeying, she has proven her obedience, her strength, and her purity.

“Many, many years ago, in a sad, faraway land, there was an enormous mountain made of rough, black stone. At sunset, on top of that mountain, a magic rose blossomed every night that made whoever plucked it immortal. But no one dared go near it because its thorns were full of poison. Men talked amongst themselves about their fear of death, and pain, but never about the promise of eternal life. And every day, the rose wilted, unable to bequeath its gift to anyone... Forgotten and lost at the top of that cold, dark mountain, forever alone, until the end of time.” (Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro)

This is the bedtime story Ofelia tells her unborn sister early in the film, and it is a telling metaphor for and summation of Del Toro's rendering of Mormon doctrine. Eternal life is atop a high mountain—cold, dark, and steep—the way is strait, and the road narrow. It is a frightening journey up this personal Moriah—so frightening that many never even attempt it. But it is in this journey—through both the darkness that lies around us, and the fear that lies within us—that our faith is tested, our character proven, and this corruption takes on incorruption. Only by passing through mortality may we transcend it; only (like Eve, like Abraham) by facing the impossible questions of our faith, until we fear it might crumble around us—only by daring to do what is right even in the face of eternal damnation—can we become exalted, and find the god that dwells within us.
“You have passed the test,” the faun says to Ofelia, and bows—and, in the film's final moments, she is welcomed to take her place next to her spiritual Father, as Princess.

“And it is said that the Princess returned to her Father's kingdom. That she reigned there with justice and a kind heart for many centuries. That she was loved by her people. And that she left behind small traces of her time on Earth, visible only to those who know where to look.” (Pan's Labyrinth, Del Toro)

III. Towards a (More) Mormon Audience

Pan's Labyrinth is just one example of a work of art that takes on greater depth of meaning when examined through a specific religious lens. Mormonism provides an unusually fitting framework through which to understand and explore Del Toro's film, even as the film itself illuminates and expounds upon the sublime heresy at the heart of Mormonism—namely, that when Adam and Eve partook of the fruit in Eden, they truly did become as gods, proving their ability to discern good from evil, even in the face of death and damnation.

While the Catholicism and the classical mythology present in Del Toro's moral fairy tale are undoubtedly deliberate, and can be traced throughout the filmmaker's body of work, it seems unlikely that Pan's Labyrinth was ever intended to have anything to do with the intricacies of doctrine in a somewhat obscure 19th century American religion. Still, once acknowledged, the parallels are undeniable. It is these sorts of critical contexts that enlarge even the works they interpret, as we find in other artist's stories the “small traces” they may have left—clues that allow us to remake the work of art in our own image; analysis becomes essay and even autobiography as we find out new things in ourselves, in the art, in the artist, and in our own doctrine. In this way, the active audience member becomes a participant in the creative process, adding to what is onscreen rather than simply and distractedly consuming it. “Indeed we may say,” says Joseph Smith, in the thirteenth Article of Faith, “that we follow the admonition of Paul... If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.” Truth, beauty, and wisdom—virtue, loveliness, and goodness—these are all ours to discover in our experiences as viewers and as critics, if, as in the final words of Del Toro's film, “we only know where to look.”

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Right now, I'm acting in a play called Jonah and the Great Fish. It's playing at the SCERA theater in Orem (click the link for info on tickets and showtimes). It's being produced by Liken, and they're shooting the film version back-to-back with the stage production. It's a fun show, and it's been a great experience getting to know some of the cast members (it's an amazingly talented cast) and getting involved with Liken, which is a very cool part of the Mormon media world right now.

Here's the first review of the show, and a story on the production from ABC 4's site.

Sorry, for anyone who happened to start it (assuming such people exist, and that any of them were interested in ever finishing it), that I still haven't posted the latter half of the short story "Sinners." It will happen someday.

In the meantime, here's me in a BYU student film project--a 319 directing project (an exercise before one's final senior project as a director) in which the student takes a scene from a pre-existing script (in this case, the Coen brothers' Barton Fink), and reshoot it (casting, shooting, editing, etc.). This was how I spent one strange morning in November, from midnight till about 5am. Enjoy

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Yesterday, the first Contest Issue of the Mormon Artist magazine was published, which includes my play "Adam and Eve" and my poem "Blind Man," including essays on each, and interviews with me. Several other great poems, essays, stories, and so forth are included as well, along with essays on them and interviews with the authors. I also did the illustrations for two poems and a series of short stories, and my brother Steve did the illustrations for "Adam and Eve." Enjoy!

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Video of a complete performance of our Grassroots Shakespeare Company touring production of Much Ado About Nothing is up on Facebook, if you'd like to check it out. Here are the links.Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5You have to be a Facebook friend of me or someone else in the cast to watch it, but, if you're reading this, you probably are. Enjoy!